@JSJcreative,
I feel your pain. There's nothing worse than losing work, for whatever reason.
I took a look at the issues, and did some new tests. It is working as expected for me on Win 11 PR 25.6.3 and Beta 26.1.1.4. And sometimes it has not worked, and you never determine why. I would create a test project, and see if autosave is working for you there, or if there is an ongoing problem. My routine setting is to the project directory (so it creates an autosave folder there), 5 minutes, and 20 versions. When I test it, I set it to 2 minutes. I create the project, and immediately save it. I have not found that you HAVE to do that save, but it's too easy not to just do it. I then import one clip to the project - i.e. the project has changed. Whether I now save it or not, the clock starts ticking for autosave. I do not worry about whether it takes it 2 minutes, a minute and a half, or 3 minutes. Now that autosave operates in the background, you don't see the popup. I keep windows explorer open on monitor 2 with the autosave folder open, and it populates with the new autosave. If autosave works, I make the clip a sequence and wait for the autosave again.
As you have, I'd be interrogating myself as to how the drive disconnecting/connecting could somehow have tricked my system or me into hiding the files. I'm Windows, and don't know Macs enough. But I once was doing a similar process, and tricked the operation system in misreading the file system. I eventually found the files but they were simply not visible (and not simply hidden).
My, "better next time" comment: as I think every expert user here who has looked at the autosave function, it is an emergency backup that, logically, is only rarely of primary use if you are doing what we advocate. Regularly do a "save a copy" (to another drive) or an iterative "save as." I frequently save projects, but I often forget. I do a "save a copy" every 30 minutes or so - and yes, I often forget. But at every important step, I make a special backup with a note added to the name that tells me the stage, e.g. "xyz precaptions 20251224.prproj".
The help guide for autosave is here:
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere/desktop/get-started/preferences-and-settings/auto-save-preferences.html
Stan
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